The old fashioned red Darwins have come up in my yard for over thirty years. The newer varieties have returned for four years. You have two choices. You can dig them up each spring and store in the refrigerator and replant every fall or you can give them bone meal or bulb food each year in the garden. In warmer climates you must dig them up. In colder climates we leave them and dig them up to divide them. The fancy ones require good drainage and to to be watered even when they are hidden. They easily rot. Several years ago my daughter bought two large bags of fancy tulips and forgot to give them to me. She left them in the house and gave them to me in the spring. I planted them in the greenhouse. Let them come up and then die back (no bloms). Took up the bulbs and stored them in the refrigerator and planted them with bulb food in the fall. They came up and bloomed. I feed them and add compost as well as mulch and they are back every year along with many I rescued from my daughter's house (left by a previous owner) when she sold the house. They were small blooms but when I planted them with food in good soil they came up with huge blooms. All my tulips except the old reds are rescues and I have so many I gave them away this year. The small bulbs you remove can be replanted with food and in a few years you have more blooming tulips. They are not annuals they just need yearly care. Treat them like a prized possession and feed them. If you plant them amongst your roses they do well as they are fed well when you feed the roses. Also never never cut back the foliage. Another problem is moose and deer who eat the buds so if you have deer that may be where your blooms go. I cover mine with chicken wire until the blossoms open. Again if you live in a warm climate you must harvest them after the foliage dies or dig them up foliage and all like you would a glad and let them die back before storing in the refrigerator. FEED THEM AT PLANTING AND YEARLY EVEN IF LEFT IN THE GROUND.

Well they sealed...but they aren't pretty! I keep forgetting I am baking challenged LOL. The filling for four of them are a white peach, and the fifth is strawberry fruit spread heh heh for DS #2. Yeah the lattice was a PITA to deal with. The family said they tasted great. I guess one stick of butter in all that dough WOULD be good, LOL. I bought the star mold too...couldn't resist, it was half off.

First...to Jterrilynn....an apology for repeatedly misspelling your name. KK, I did not tape up the tile. They are so heavy and so expensive! I am really afraid one will break. I ordered extras, but not with the extra course under the windows in mind. So, I did a mock-up using paper and it looks darn good when I squint my eyes to get a sense of what it will look like. Circuspeanut, thanks so much for that picture! That says it all! At first I thought, "yeah, but her counter matches the window trim." Then I realized mine does, too. doh (Are you a her, btw?) Thanks for cheering us on, davidro! Blfenton, I plan to take this all one step at a time. I won't paint the window trim unless I really need to. I still think the uppers could benefit from paint and the truth is I always wanted a painted kitchen but my builder didn't offer it. I just ordered the espresso (almost three years ago now!) and figured I could paint later if I wanted to. The tile is two colors which, in combination, look like a third color somewhere in the middle. So I will probably use one of the two actual colors, so there will be some variation from the visual blending of the two. (Did that make any sense at all?!) Anyway, I need the tile on the wall before I get too crazy picking colors. The tile will run under the cabs on the L side of the kitchen. The opposite (fridge) wall will just be paint. The tile will end at the lower edge of the hood. I will remove the apron from both windows. Like you, I want the easy clean-up. Thanks for all your input!

I bought one of the giant rolls of wool batting. (Wool batting can be so expensive and this was the most economical for pure wool.) My plan is to make mattress pads for my king size bed that are washable (this wool is washable). I'd have to make a couple of them as one the thickness I want wouldn't fit in machines! OF course, this is mostly a dream. I made one but didn't layer it with anything so it gradually tore apart. Maybe mentioning it here will motivate. I'm stuck on fastening the layers. I have a strong (all beit fully silly) aversion to hand stitching ---- but I think doing the tied-quilting technique is the simplist and most forgiving. I lay it out on my bed to cut it, but of course that means laying out something clean on top as my cats ...., well you know if you live with indoor cats. (Hi, everyone! I have done some quilting (machine, of course) but am currently focused on fitting pants.)